The book is published by Jeremy P. Tarcher Inc. of the Penguin Group. It focuses on the role that experts hired by public relations firms play in quieting public fear with inaccurate or incomplete information about the dangers of toxins industrial processes release into the environment.[4][5]

An April 2001 Village Voice review of the book says the book is "exhaustively detailed", "calmly convincing", and "light on rhetoric", warning readers that the book may induce "paranoidfatalism" about corporate manipulations.[6][7]

Bill Moyers of PBS said: "If you want to know how the world wags, and who's wagging it, here's your answer. Read, get mad, roll up your sleeves, and fight back. Rampton and Stauber have issued a wake-up call we can't ignore."